Inside the opening night party of Camera Roll Orgy – the NYC group show revealing the lost gems from the iPhones of the city’s revered photographers
“I’ve been thinking about the state of photography today in a historical context, and imagining what art scholars of the future may have to say about us,” says photographer and curator, Thomas Polcaster. “Our camera rolls have replaced physical photo albums. What an atrocity that we can’t pick them up and look through them. They are stuck in the digital ether and demanding to be released.”
Galvanised by this sense of loss, the New York-based creative has curated a group show inviting ten fellow photographers to transform the digital imagery relegated to their phone camera rolls into physical photographs. He tells Dazed, “The act of printing breathes life into photographic works that many do not consider to be works in the first place.”
Held at new gallery The Shop – an exhibition space co-founded by photographer Matt Weinberger and painter-cum-exterminator Avery Addison Hunsberger in the back of a pest control shop in the Lower East Side – Camera Roll Orgy brings together hitherto unseen pictures by Ryan McGinley, Jack Pierson, Lyle Ashton Harris, Luca Imperatori, Paul Levack, Justin Leveritt, David Lindsay, Armando Nin, Nick Sethi, Lucien Smith and Polcaster himself.
A guiding principle in the curation of the exhibition was friendship. “All of the artists in the show are deeply important to me, personally. I worked closely with each artist to draw conclusions about their respective practices,” Polecater explains. The trust elicited by these relationships was a crucial aspect of putting the show together, allowing the curator a level of access and intimacy that proved invaluable. “Some of them actually handed me their phone and gave me unrestricted access,” he says. “There is so much trust in that exchange. Many of these artists did not have iPhone works in their portfolios, but now they do. I’m honoured that most of them made work specifically for this show.”
“I wanted to remind viewers that photographic works can be just as dynamic as paintings and sculptures. I have a profound faith in the medium” – Thomas Polcaster
Perhaps this network of homosociality contributes to the ways these images interact with one another across the walls of the gallery. “The works are elated to sit in the same room as each other,” Polcaster tells us. “They have so much to talk about!” He describes the atmosphere of the exhibition as one of “quiet joy” and “wholesomeness radiating through the room”. “This was not a conscious decision, but it revealed itself beautifully when we installed,” he recalls. “There’s also a nod to Pictorial Effect in Photography by Henry Peach Robinson. I wanted to remind viewers that photographic works can be just as dynamic as paintings and sculptures. I have a profound faith in the medium.”
Polcaster hopes the exhibition raises questions about the volume, value and dissemination of images. How has digital photography changed the currency of pictures? “The over-saturation of images is a conundrum,” he says. “Have you noticed that people are posting less than ever on social media? Thank god, because it’s a dead end. Much of the value of art hinges on scarcity. This is a very interesting question to ponder, but Camera Roll Orgy does not attempt to answer it. The show acts like a koan.”
More than anything, his wish is that visitors will take time to tune into the pace of the show, which must feel somewhat slower than the frenetic speed of life on the city streets outside the gallery. From Paul Levack’s “Untitled (Enzo Playing)” (2024) which captures the artist’s hand plunged into the fur of his beloved Brittany spaniel, Lucien Smith’s “Untitled (Jane & Goji 83 Canal)” (2024) which takes as its source material a photograph of a reclining woman happily contemplating a cat, or Lyle Ashton Harris’s mat selfie taken in the narcotic wake of a hot yoga session, Camera Roll Orgy glorifies moments which exist outside the stream of modernity’s hectic pace. Polcaster concludes, “I hope the show divorces viewers from their sense of urgency and brings them deeper into the here and now.”
Take a look at the galleries above for a closer look at the show and also Matt Weinberger’s photographs of what went down at the exhibition’s opening night party.
Camera Roll Orgy is showing until June 22, 2024 (opening hours for public viewing are Saturday-Sunday 12-6 or by appointment only) at The Shop (Addison Pest Control’s community space for cultural programming) at 176 Delancey St, New York, NY.
